Planning : I started off by brainstorming what type of portrait I wanted to do. Then not thinking of anything immediately, I turned to my old notes about different art movements from 10th grade. After going through them, The portrait of joseph Roulin stuck out and decided that it would be my inspiration
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To begin, I made a quick outline of how I would make my portrait. I also drew a quick doodle of the background of my inspiration because I would like to incorparate something simmilar to it in my piece. I then practiced drawing a pair of glasses because I never seem to be able to draw them properly. I also practice some more misc. things that I feel would be useful such as some embelishments.
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I drew three hair styles I tend to have. After taking the picture of myself, I drew a quick mock of the way the hair looked then. I also practiced the shading of hair, but since it's with a pencil & not paint, it likely won't help me besides technique. I also drew some shirts that I commonly wore. After taking the picture I decided to make the shirt just black like the bottom most shirt.
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Experimentation : To start, I divided the canvas into nine 1 ft by 1 ft sqares. I then divided them in half to make the squares smaller and more numerous so that the grid methods would work better. Due to a lack of techinal knowledge, I had no idea how to get grid lines on to my referrence photo. I also had no way of projecting my photo That then ruined my whole process and composition. Because of this I free handed the outline, using vague "this is roughly 1 square sized" "measurements'. This resulted in a very weirdly-porpotion face because my fave was not that round, and the body was not meant to be that far down.
After making the rough outline of the body, I started painting the background. Because my inspiration had a green background, I decided to emulate that as well. My green was not the correct shade so I decided to darken it with a bit of black. This made it a signifigantly darker tone then both the orignal color and the inspiration. I decided to keep it both to make it a bit more unique & being unsure how to make that specific shade of green used in the portrait. filling took quite a lot more paint & time because I sorely mistook how much room there truely was.
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Next I would make the skin. I was unsure how to make a skin tone, so I had asked my sibling how to make it without just conveniently having a shade like it. After that I got to work mixing the paint and the shade was near pefect. I had gotten the side with the the highlights on it done and it looked fine. But to make the shadowed side, it would require me to add a darker tone to my previously mixed tone. I added some brown but it was too dark so I had added some of highlight over it, just making it look more grey then anything. A mistake I made immediately when I started the skin tone was painting a streak of the highlight in the shadowed area. as such it made a very visible mark. so I had used the orginal tone to cover it making it look worse with a large streak across my face. The nose was slightly off dude to both no understanding of how to properly shade it, the improper outline and a lack of foward facing perspectives. The neck had no problems.
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The shirt was meant to have a design on it but I had no idea how to protray it so I had blanked on it and I somewhat regret it, because it all one color. But it helps people to focus a bit more on the more aspects I want people to fucs on for better or worse. along with that I had painted my glasses. I am absolutely terrible at making glasses. they're either too small, like the portrait, too large, or crooked. Ths throws off the perspective of my piece just a bit.
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After all that the painting looked incomplete. so I aksed my family to get another's opinion.went back and went over it and fixed the rough edges of my clothes. also fixing the very poor attempt to cover a mistake and making due with the face being dry. I also added pupils because I had forgotten and slightly regret it because the pupils are creepy and I quite liked the look of the pupiless eyes, despite that it simplely didn't fit the style. To add a bit more detail I added flowers to the background similar to how Van gogh did. useign orange, I made simple outlines of flowers and added some lines of embelishment.
Critique / reflection : This painting started off extremely poor. rough edges galore, horrible shading, etc. But thanks to me going over and getting another's perspespective, I was able to save the portrait. If I hadn't done that it likely would have been a repeat of my previous attempted at a painting. Because of all this as much as it shows that I could make a nice piece in this medium, I would rather not pursue it. I use pen and paper more, and rarely color them, even when I do the are mainly flat colors. But besides that all in all I feel decently proud of this piece despite the extremely rough and terrible start to it.
Compare & Contrast :
Compare : The green backbackground with flowers and curling lines are present in both, though mine are sinpler & more visible. the floward facing blank faces on both me and joesph are simmilar, my face was based off of his. Both are of men who captivaed their respected artists. Both of our shading is really only limited to one section of the portrait.
Contrast : My portrait is a self portrait rather then of someone else. His colors are more muted and less intense then my darker and more contrasting colors. My peice appers to hav a bit more noticable shading on mine rather then his. His backgrounds are giving seeming just as much thought as the acctual focus of the piece.
Compare : The green backbackground with flowers and curling lines are present in both, though mine are sinpler & more visible. the floward facing blank faces on both me and joesph are simmilar, my face was based off of his. Both are of men who captivaed their respected artists. Both of our shading is really only limited to one section of the portrait.
Contrast : My portrait is a self portrait rather then of someone else. His colors are more muted and less intense then my darker and more contrasting colors. My peice appers to hav a bit more noticable shading on mine rather then his. His backgrounds are giving seeming just as much thought as the acctual focus of the piece.
connection to ACT
1.) The cause and effect relationship of my inspiration and my own work is the background. Normally I would have left ot blank and not put thought into it, but the detail Van Gogh put into made me do somethoing simmilar.
2.) The overall approach is "I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we try to convey by the actual radiance and vibration of our coloring." Because of this, the artwork is apart of a set of 6. they all are a new style of portrait that he was trying to create.
3.) The generalization is that Van gogh saw in people was radient. The few portraits of people that he made was not trying to get the reaistic approch but rather trying to capture it through colors.
4.) The central idea was to figure out why he made it. He barely made any portraits, at least compared to the amount of landscapes he did. I wanted to find out why he made them and why them were the same guy.
5.) The inferences that I saw was van gogh saw people differently. it may not have been everybody but he wanted to convey the vibrency of people through this new stlye of portrait.
1.) The cause and effect relationship of my inspiration and my own work is the background. Normally I would have left ot blank and not put thought into it, but the detail Van Gogh put into made me do somethoing simmilar.
2.) The overall approach is "I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we try to convey by the actual radiance and vibration of our coloring." Because of this, the artwork is apart of a set of 6. they all are a new style of portrait that he was trying to create.
3.) The generalization is that Van gogh saw in people was radient. The few portraits of people that he made was not trying to get the reaistic approch but rather trying to capture it through colors.
4.) The central idea was to figure out why he made it. He barely made any portraits, at least compared to the amount of landscapes he did. I wanted to find out why he made them and why them were the same guy.
5.) The inferences that I saw was van gogh saw people differently. it may not have been everybody but he wanted to convey the vibrency of people through this new stlye of portrait.
Citations :
https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/vincent-van-gogh-portrait-of-joseph-roulin-1889/
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79105
https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/vincent-van-gogh-portrait-of-joseph-roulin-1889/
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79105